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Page 280
busy speeding parting guests and entertaining those who remained, Ian vacillated between fury at the way Alinor had used her guests and relief that the cause of the king's angerif John decided to show his spitewould be well and widely known. That night, as soon as Alinor's maids had gathered up his discarded clothing and left the chamber, he turned on his wife.
"What outlaws? How did you dare?"
Alinor made no reply, quietly braiding her hair into two plaits as thick as Ian's wrists. Ordinarily she did not braid her hair at night, but it had got in her way when she mounted her husband the previous night. As Ian had been on his feet a good deal this day and his knee seemed, from the way he was standing, to be painful, she thought it just as well to be prepared to play the more active role in lovemaking again.
"Did you hear me?" Ian snarled.
"I am not deaf," Alinor rejoined calmly.
"How dared you trap the bishops, Oxford, Llewelyn, your vassals and mine, even John's own brother and daughter into an open disapproval of the king's act?"
"Because it was an act worthy of disapproval."
"That is not what I meant," Ian bellowed. "You cannot befool me! There were no outlaws in the forest. I scoured it clean, and I know it was clean. It was your men who took the messenger. How dared you do such a thing?"
"I thought it better than adding open defiance of the king's will to the spite he already has against me. The messenger came to no harm. No blame can fall upon him for what clearly was not his fault. No blame can fall on us for what was not our fault. Where have I done wrong?"
"You have lied with your eyes, with your mouth and your voice, with your body. You"
"I will confess and do penance," Alinor said indifferently.
Ian choked. "Father Francis must have the penance

 
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